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The London Necropolis Company (LNC), formally the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company until 1927, was a cemetery operator established by Act of Parliament in 1852 in reaction to the crisis caused by the closure of London's graveyards in 1851. The LNC intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London's future burials in perpetuity. The company's founders recognised that the recently invented technology of the railway provided the ability to conduct burials far from populated areas, mitigating concerns over public health risks from living near burial sites. Accordingly, the company bought a very large tract of land in Brookwood, Surrey, around 25 miles (40 km) from London, and converted a portion of it into Brookwood Cemetery. A dedicated railway line, the London Necropolis Railway, linked the new cemetery to the city.

Financial mismanagement and internal disputes led to delays in the project. By the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in late 1854, a number of other cemeteries had opened nearer to London or were in the process of opening. While some parishes in London did arrange for the LNC to handle the burials of their dead, many preferred to use nearer cemeteries. The LNC had anticipated handling between 10,000 and 50,000 burials per year, but the number never rose above 4,100 per year, and in its first 150 years of operations only 231,730 burials had been conducted. Buying the land for Brookwood Cemetery and building the cemetery and railway had been very expensive, and by the time the cemetery opened the LNC was already on the verge of bankruptcy. The LNC remained solvent by selling surplus parts of its land, but as the land had been chosen for its remoteness, sales were low.

The economy of New York City encompasses the largest municipal and regional economy in the United States. In 2022, the New York metropolitan area generated a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$1.4trillion , with a population of 23.6 million people. Anchored by Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City has been characterized as the world's premier financial center. The city is home to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, on Wall Street) and Nasdaq (headquartered in Times Square), the world's two largest stock exchanges by both market capitalization and trading activity.

New York City, anchored by Manhattan, is the world's leading center of banking, finance, and communication. Many of the world's largest corporations are headquartered in Manhattan. The borough contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m²) of office space in 2015, making it the largest office market in the United States. Midtown Manhattan, with nearly 400 million square feet (37.2 million m²) that same year, is the largest central business district in the world. New York City is distinctive for its high concentrations of advanced service sector firms in the law, accountancy, banking, and management consultancy fields. It is the top global center for the advertising industry, which is metonymously called "Madison Avenue". Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's broad-spectrum high technology sphere, continues to expand. (Full article...)

"The type of fallacy involved in projecting loss experience from a universe of non-insured bonds onto a deceptively-similar universe in which many bonds are insured pops up in other areas of finance. “Back-tested” models of many kinds are susceptible to this sort of error. Nevertheless, they are frequently touted in financial markets as guides to future action. (If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.)

Indeed, the stupefying losses in mortgage-related securities came in large part because of flawed, history-based models used by salesmen, rating agencies and investors. These parties looked at loss experience over periods when home prices rose only moderately and speculation in houses was negligible. They then made this experience a yardstick for evaluating future losses. They blissfully ignored the fact that house prices had recently skyrocketed, loan practices had deteriorated and many buyers had opted for houses they couldn’t afford. In short, universe “past” and universe “current” had very different characteristics. But lenders, government and media largely failed to recognize this all-important fact.

Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas."

—Warren Buffett, To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 2009

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• ... that Eleanor Hadley, a 29-year-old doctoral candidate in economics, was recruited by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to implement antitrust policies in occupied Japan?
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• ... that the economy of Tolkien's Middle-earth has been described as a mix of feudalism and capitalism, with one scholar even suggesting it had communist elements?

May 6:

• 1903 - Toots Shor, an American businessman, founder of Toots Shor's Restaurant, was born on this day.

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• ...advertising management is a function of marketing starting from market research, continuing through advertising, leading to actual sales or achievement of objectives?

• ... that a value-added service (VAS) is a telecommunications industry term for non-core services or, in short, all services beyond standard voice calls?

• ...that EID Parry is one of the oldest business entities in the Indian subcontinent and owes its origin to Thomas Parry, a Welshman who came to India in late 1780s?

• ... that an agrarian society is one that is based on agriculture as its prime means for support and sustenance?

• ... that the expression Hindu rate of growth is used to refer to the low annual growth rate of the economy of India, which stagnated around 3.5% from 1950 to 1980?

• ...that Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daron Acemoğlu received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal for his work on Skill Acquisition and Technological Change, Investment and Growth, Directed Search and Unemployment, The Role of Institutions in Economic Development and Political Economy?

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